Whether or not Tredwell-Owen actually wrote this script, however, is a matter of some dispute. A lawsuit, filed in New York by Robert Fiveson, writer/director of the B classic The Clonus Horror, suggested that Tredwell-Owen's script was in fact lifted from Fiveson's sci-fi film, released in 1979. Further, The Island script was strikingly similar to a screenplay previously submitted to Spider-Man producer Avi Arad --Spider-Man producing partner of Ian Bryce, who later produced The Island--entitled Astrocorp, written by screenwriter Luke Shanahan and psychiatrist Dr. Michael Alan Schwartz.

In addition to his The Island credit, Tredwell-Owen is the screenwriter of record of the universally panned Beyond Borders, which Variety's Todd Mccarthy called "high-minded claptrap" and New York Times reviewer Elvis Mitchell likened to "watching someone trying to dry his hands with sandpaper."